The atmosphere or tone of your community is hard to measure. But achieving a positive tone is critically important to your community success. Like a massive black hole you can't see it directly, but a negative tone warps everything around it and pulls it down. That's why community management and moderation are so important: effective community leadership in your terms and guidelines, the welcome messages and content you create, and in every interaction online with your members influences the overall mood of your community. Each is an opportunity for you to positively engage your members to elevate your community tone.

Don't let negativity sap the energy and light from your community:

Be transparent: Establish guidelines for member behavior and cite them when taking action.

Be positive: Don't rise to the bait when a member is frustrated, and be twice as nice online as you are in person.
Be respectful: Warn your members politely and in private, not in public. There's no need to embarrass anyone.

Be consistent: Document the actions you take with members (and be sure to read the notes of others).

What are you doing to keep your community a warm and sunny place?

photo by Dana Berry of SkyWorks Digital (found posted on flickr by thebadastronomer)

When my daughter was in preschool she learned the basics of good conflict resolution: "Use your words!"

As community vendors, we often talk about all the great tools and abilities of our products. But it needs to be said that the most important tool that any moderator has is the one inside their heads.

Communities are made of people, not tools. The ability to steer, persuade, coach, engage and lead by example is not something a software tool can do for you. So while we at Lithium spend a considerable amount of time trying to design more powerful and intuitive tools in our products for moderators, the best kind of moderation needs no more than what is equally available to (but sometimes eludes) your members: positive, helpful, supportive and appreciative words.

Do you have a story about how a particular member was turned around through some positive thinking and even more positive talking? Celebrate it here in the comments!